“Reetoxa turns two of the darkest chapters of his life into music filled with beauty, loss, and hard-won hope.”
“Double A Side 2 (Akaroa / Erica And The Stars)” is the kind of release that asks you to listen closely. Reetoxa, the project of Melbourne singer-songwriter Jason Mckee, has never relied only on musical influences for inspiration. His songs come from things he has actually lived through. In this case, those experiences are especially heavy, but the music does not stay trapped in them.
“Akaroa” is the first of the two tracks, and its story is difficult to forget. The song began with a vivid dream during a period when Mckee was in prison and grieving the death of his mother. In that dream, the name Akaroa appeared to him even though he had never heard of the New Zealand town. He wrote the name down and started working on a guitar idea, only for the moment to disappear. Years later, while visiting New Zealand, his ship stopped in Akaroa because of bad weather. The song suddenly returned to him. That is an unusual story, but the music gives it a more grounded emotional meaning. “Akaroa” becomes less about explaining the strange details and more about holding onto a feeling that refused to disappear. The guitar-based foundation connects the song to Mckee’s songwriting roots, while the story behind it gives every note a heavier sense of meaning. “Erica And The Stars” goes somewhere even more intense. Mckee wrote the song during a serious mental health crisis, at a point when he was struggling with frightening thoughts and hallucinations. Writing became a way to pull himself back toward something creative and positive. What makes the finished recording remarkable is the orchestral arrangement. The Budapest Orchestra performs the music as Mckee heard it in his head while writing the song.
That gives the track a very different character from “Akaroa.” It is not simply another personal singer-songwriter piece. The orchestra expands the emotional scale of the song and gives the writing room to breathe. Mckee’s idea started in an extremely difficult place, but it eventually became something beautiful enough to be performed by a full orchestra. The musicians involved also deserve attention. Simon Moro handles production, mixing and mastering, while Luke Crouch engineers the recording. Terry HarT contributes piano, James Ryan of Men at Work plays guitar, Kit Riley adds bass, Peter Martin of Jet plays drums, and Jessica Mcpherson-Riley provides backing vocals. The orchestral sessions took place in Budapest, while the band recorded at The Avenue Recording Studio in Cheltenham, Victoria. What stays with me about this double A-side is the contrast between the two songs. “Akaroa” is tied to grief, memory and an experience Mckee struggled to explain. “Erica And The Stars” comes from an even more frightening period, yet both songs end up pointing toward creativity rather than despair. There is no need to romanticise the pain behind these songs. The achievement is that Mckee managed to turn experiences that could have completely broken his creative voice into music with purpose and emotional depth. “Double A Side 2” is personal, unusual and deeply sincere. It sounds like an artist who has had to rebuild his work from the ground up and has found a reason to keep writing.
English